Planet of the Dazzling Sky
by Kurissyma san Tybalt
Summary: "I wasn't even worried—except in the normal way. It was more, 'Hey, what's that silly Doctor gone and done now'. Because all he did was park us somewhere nice and wander off to get scones." It's been 286 days since the Doctor disappeared, leaving Clara trapped on Capsicoria with a Silurian krestlehorn farmer, a native baker, and a Tardis who won't budge. Clara x Doctor
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1 – (Clara's POV)**

Found the dairy this morning. I think it was a dairy. I mean, they were _probably_ cows. Of a sort. Anyway I was just thinking that we were running out of milk and there it was—sort of down the hall, past the galley, a little to the left. Wasn't sure how I could have missed it before.

It must have been the Tardis, of course. Seems like the Old Girl is finally getting used to me. She even let me lie in an hour late this morning before the routine search. Although she still won't hear of us leaving Caspicoria. Last time I brought it up I couldn't find the showers for a week.

It's been 286 days since the Doctor disappeared. Been keeping a diary – sort of. Kind of hit a blank after Day 80. There are only so many ways you can say, "Went out looking, still no sign" after all. Most days I just mark with a big red X.

I didn't start writing it down for a couple of weeks though. I wasn't even worried—except in the normal way. It was more, "Hey, what's that silly Doctor gone and done now?", really. Because all he did was park us somewhere nice and wander off to get scones.

"Well, sort of scones," he said. "Sort of _like_ scones."

Said they were a delicacy on this planet. Capsicoria, it's called. Jewel in the crown of the Resplyxian Galaxy and there's no surprise there. It's beautiful. And the safest, _safest_ place, not to worry.

"Won't be long," he says, "And this is the safest place I know." Only just caught something about how he should really stop saying that as the door swung shut behind him. When I try to remember that day, I think I heard him pick up a jaunty kind of whistle just outside. I heard it maybe five seconds before he was out of range. I went back to the galley, not bothered at all and tried to whip up a nice soufflé before he got back. When it collapsed I was glad he was taking so long—gave me time to hide the evidence.

By the evening I was wondering if I'd wished him right out of existence. Later, I'd think I could've dreamed him up if I didn't have the Tardis. Or if I weren't still on this daft old planet with the glittering skies and the bluebells that really chime.

On the second day I ventured outside. I wasn't even looking for him so much as I was bored of waiting around. Figured I wouldn't wander far, and when I came back maybe he'd be there. I imagined his face perking up as I walked in the door. He'd have been back a few hours by then and be bursting with eagerness to show me whatever he'd gone off looking for. Probably got distracted—forgot all about scones and gone on the hunt for some rare Caspicorian cabbage beetle.

_Besides_, I reasoned. He hadn't even told me not to wander off. He'd even mentioned a little café that served something brilliant and just a bit like apple pie, only I couldn't remember where he'd said it was and he wasn't there to ask.

On the third day I went properly looking. Checked all the obvious places: prisons, palaces, places of worship. Checked every hospital and medical centre in the city. Couldn't do it all in the one day, but I've had the better part of a year now.

_Have you seen this man?_ Tall, lanky, daft hair—bit daft all over, really—wears a bowtie, and a fez if he can find one. Turns out they don't even have fezzes in Caspicoria. Doesn't seem they've got the Doctor here either.

There was no one rude or unhelpful (at least not at first), and no one seemed to be hiding anything. Why would they? He's been gone a couple days and it's, "Oh, I'm sure he's fine. Have you tried this bar or that shoe shop? You said he liked hats, well there's a great hatter down that way!" He's been gone a week and they say, "Oh dear, well have you got onto the police?" By the time he's gone a month they're a bit weary of being asked. They've all seen the posters, all heard the news. But they're cooperative, sympathetic. They can't help that they really don't remember what they were doing on the 9th Day of the Moon of Little Shearers when it's nearly the Month of Addled Crows already.

It was downhill from there. The communal helplessness began to weigh down on them. Sympathy turned to pity, turned to frustration, turned to rumours of madness, delusions. Some thought I'd been lying in the first place and there wasn't any Doctor at all. She wants his insurance, said a few knowingly. But how I'm supposed to benefit from the death of a man who doesn't exist in any document on the planet, that's what I'd like to know. Anyway, in the end I stopped asking.

It was the first few weeks that were the hardest. I wanted to drop in on the kids—just a quick trip to check no one needed me desperately, maybe say I was going away. In and out, I promised the Tardis. But she didn't budge then and she won't budge now. Hasn't moved an inch in 286 days. You know, I reckon if the Doctor doesn't come back she might never budge again. Begun to dream about her. Old and faded with all her lights dead, sitting in this grassy knoll two miles from the city and overgrown with those damned bluebells. "The bluebells that really chime," the Doctor had chirped, and so they do: all night long. Church bells by which to mourn his loss.

But what's a year to the Tardis? Or even two years, ten, a hundred or more. I may well die in this blue box, on this funny little planet, in this galaxy three million light years from home and eighty years into my future.

It's not all bad. The city is really very nice, very clean, and only twenty minutes into the city on the back of something called a Krestlehorn. And the Tardis is good company as long as I don't stay out too late and tell her when I'll be home. I've even got a couple of friends.

Cesp, the Silurian woman whose Krestlehorn farm has become the Tardis's long-term roost (and whose roast of I-don't-want-to-know-what is the next best thing to mum's Sunday lamb).

And then Ronlin, the native Capsicorian whose almost-scones are supposedly the best in the city. He tells me that if the Doctor was wanting scones that day there's no other place he would have been headed than straight to him. Except Ronlin never saw the Doctor that day—reckons something happened him first. I reckon Ronlin just likes me to tell everyone that his bakery was where the Doctor was headed when he disappeared—any publicity is good publicity, and earth isn't the only place money matters. Still I appreciate the company when he comes to help search.

Speaking of money, though, I've had to earn some. Big round coins the size of your palm, made of something I'm pretty sure I've never seen anywhere else. I work in the bakery or I help Cesp with the Krestlehorns—huge grey winged things, they are, only I'm not allowed to fly them. Not yet. They run decent enough to get you around and anyway you need a license to fly. Fancy the Doctor coming back and I've got myself a flying license.

Sometimes I want to laugh at it all, only I know I must be dead back home. Mr Maitland and the kids… They probably gave me a funeral. Could well have a stone down stone next to my mum's. And flowers on a grave in London 2013 when all the while I'm eating roast-something and almost-scones with a lizard woman and a pudgy little man on a faraway planet, eighty years later. Even if I could find another ship and return Angie'd probably be dead, maybe Artie too. They'd be old, and they mightn't even remember their old nanny if it weren't for the Doctor. Their one great trip on the Tardis—just enough to give them a lifetime of wonders and terrors about whatever became of us.

And that's the other thing, isn't it. Because if I leave here, I'm leaving the Tardis behind, and I'm leaving him too. Much as I screamed at the Old Girl early on, much as I slammed doors and banged on walls, much as I shouted that I didn't give a flying crock of ice warriors where she'd hidden the toilets, _just take me home you dumb cow_, I was always a bit glad she refused.

I mean I know, you should give up, right? 283 days pass—you should give up. You know if he was in any proper way to come back he'd have done it by now. You know he cares about you, wouldn't want to worry you, wouldn't ever just strand you here. You even think he could have… Well, it doesn't matter what he could have. You know it doesn't matter.

Except it does.

And you don't give up.

You eat roast-something and almost-scones and you shower and pee and get into bed and fall well sleep at the end of the day—unless you've pissed the Tardis off, or the bluebells are chiming too loud in the field.

You're you-don't-know-how-many light years from home, and yet you go on living like you're Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter's just popped off for a bit of tea and got sidetracked along the way.

And everything becomes a bit normal until you start to think that maybe what you called scones back in London were the almost-scones, while Ronlin's are the real deal, and you're not sure you'll ever get to sleep again without the Tardis whirring in your ear.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The Resplyxian Galaxy is known for its dazzling skies. A combination of millions of stars and planets in close range and an advanced clean energy network has resulted in some of the brightest nights anywhere in the cosmos. Artificial darkness is maintained with the aid of a city-wide shade, closed at 7:30 each night, at which point the streetlights are turned on and flood the streets with an ice blue glow.

Because Cesp's krestlehorn farm lies just outside the city limits, it operates its own minor shade over the house and stable, allowing its occupants to sleep soundly. But Cesp often wakes in the night and, opening her heavy curtains, catches me out amongst the bluebells, under the sparkling sky. She joins me because it's a longing we both share: to return to the planet of our birth.

Madame Vastra never mentioned it, but I think it hurt Cesp to know there was no place for a Silurian on Earth anymore—not on the surface, at least not now. Maybe Vastra's too dignified for that, or maybe it's because she has Jenny. Or had. How long do Silurians live? Or Sontarens? We're 80 years into my future, and the Paternoster gang lived in Victorian London. They're probably all dead now.

Cesp pretends she stays here for her krestlehorns, but I can tell that's not all it is. I don't know if she says it because she doesn't want to offend me, as some sort of representative of the planet that rejected her, or for some other reason, but I know Cesp more than I know about her, and I know it's not true. Still, I let her explain about the Silurians.

She says they're dull-headed creatures, but she says it in a fond way that somehow gives the opposite impression. Big boned and strong, with wings of an unbelievable span, they trade in kindnesses. That is, although Cesp, who raises, shelters, and feeds them, is paid by the customers who rent them, the beasts themselves will fly for anyone who treats them gently.

"Never kick a krestlehorn," Cesp had warned me, the first time I was allowed to ride one. I assumed it was because they wouldn't move if you hurt them, which was fair enough. But now Cesp explained that the opposite was true.

"The danger isn't that the krestlehorns won't fly, it's that they _will_," she says. "I sometimes think they're simple, but that's not it. They don't forget what you've done—they just don't resent it. Injure a krestlehorn, then offer it a quecklefruit, and even if it's in agony, it'll take you anywhere."

"That's amazing," I replied in what I hoped was a duly appreciative tone, but the way Cesp smiled at me it was clear that _I_ was the simple one.

"They're children." She shrugged and went on briskly: "My krestlehorns have a good home. Food, water, plenty of exercise. The shade over the stable helps them sleep and keeps their eyes from becoming strained. You and I care for them even when we don't need or want anything in return, but not all people are like that. That's why these farms are important, and why I can't leave."

"The Doctor is the kindest man I know," I mused. "How far could a krestlehorn have taken him by now."

It was a rhetorical question. The Doctor I knew could have found his way anywhere in the galaxy with nothing but that silly screwdriver, and he'd have loved to tell you exactly how and have you marvel at him for it. By now both of us knew it, and so we turned our gaze upwards.

The bright stars shone like daylight above and I squinted at them until my eyes stung and I had to look away. Cesp, beside me, had reclined on her elbows to look up, but cocked her head towards me as I watched her.

"I've been thinking, my dear: If your Doctor had wanted to disappear why wouldn't he have taken one of my krestlehorns? He deposited your dwelling-box right here inside my walls, but not one is missing, and there is really no better way to travel this country."

I bit my lip—obviously I'd wondered too, but it bothered me to hear Cesp talk like he'd disappeared on purpose.

"I suppose," I eventually replied, "If he really were leaving—you know, _properly_—it'd be too obvious to go to you. He'd have to know we'd meet and if you'd just rented him a krestlehorn—"

"I wouldn't have had to," Cesp intercepts. "The defenses around my property are all I have against theft—and you must tell me one day how you both dragged that old box in here without disturbing anything—so, well… What I said about the krestlehorns before, what I meant was: all your Doctor would have had to do was approach one of them with a bit of fruit, maybe give it a bit of a pat, and it would have taken him anywhere, loyalties aside. Yet none are missing."

I had to hold back an indignant response. I couldn't say he _wouldn't_ steal an animal if the situation arose. After all, the Tardis wasn't exactly signed, stamped, and paid for herself. But that raised another problem.

"If he didn't take a krestlehorn, then he walked into town."

"You've walked into town yourself," Cesp dismissed me.

"Sure, but I was walking _into town_, not disappearing off the face of Capsicoria." Sitting up properly, I fixed her with a meaningful look. "I'd take a leisurely walk into town if I were, say, headed to Ronlin's for some scones. If I were legging it I'd take a krestlehorn or I'd— Well, I'd kick me out and take the _Tardis,_ obviously!_"_

I hadn't the words to address Cesp's confusion without making it worse, so instead I picked up myself, dragging her to her feet along with me. Once Cesp saw it, of course, she'd understand. And so I opened the doors (which, I have to say, stuck a bit, thanks Sexy) and unveiled her in all her bigger-on-the-inside glory, ignoring the whirring of apprehension she gave off toward her unannounced visitor.

"_We haven't discussed this,"_ was the clear vibe I was getting from the Tardis, and she was not pleased.

"Come on, girl, not to worry," I whispered, circling the console with just a bit of apprehension myself. "Cesp's a sweetie, you'll like her…"

Of course, there are those in town who think I'm mad, and I don't think Cesp could've been entirely convinced of that herself if she hadn't been in here, seeing it for herself, _feeling_ the Tardis bristle in that impossible-but-obvious way as she laid her hand harmlessly against a control.

I told her she'd best step lightly. The Tardis, unlike the krestlehorns, was never a great one for forgiveness. God knew she'd taken her time with me.

"Then this is… your transport," Cesp ventured, and finally, with all the relief that comes from unleashing a long-kept secret, I flooded clean. I told her all of it, how we'd met and how we'd come here, and how it may well be that he Doctor would abandon me some day, for some unknown reason, but how he'd _never_ leave this box.

"The Tardis is all he has in the universe, and well…" I found myself blushing, "So am I, I guess."

Now Cesp, whose feet seemed to have become unstuck, began to circle the console herself. Her long green fingers reached out to brush the dust from a few controls, which had been unused for the better part of a year. The Tardis's grateful metallic whimper here informed me that the business of dusting had been my long neglected duty and that she wasn't very pleased with me on that count either. Eventually, however, Cesp stopped and stared very hard but very gently at the console, and then up. I'd seen her look that way before only at her krestlehorns.

"I can sense the greatness of her soul," she said quietly. "She is magnificent. And ancient."

You both are, I thought, and the Tardis acknowledged this too in her begrudging way. As well as something else, which made the corner of Cesp's mouth twitch upward in amusement. I didn't quite catch it.

Finally, Cesp continued our previous discussion ponderingly. "So, the Doctor wasn't escaping that day. I can sense that this _Tardis_ is as certain as you are that the he would never abandon her." She turned back to me, as if considering me anew. "Which leaves the question: If the Doctor truly was walking into town that day in search of scones, then _why_—" the way she pronounced the _h_ was poignantly reminiscent of Madame Vastra, "—did he not reach his destination, and _why_ was he not seen?"

Raised her head to look beyond me, Cesp frowned, as though realising that there, too, were not the right questions. "Clara, why did you come here? The Tardis does not believe it to be a simple matter of baked goods. Surely you don't either."

"The sky," I blurted, my voice choked for reasons I couldn't explain. "He said… 'The Planet of the Dazzling Sky'."

_It's brilliant Clara! The most beautiful place for galaxies around! …You'll fit right in._

I blushed, but Cesp's voice had sharpened.

"You are not tourists, Clara. Think. Why here, why now? Anywhere in time in space, isn't that right?"

"I don't—"

"_Anywhere _in time and space and he brought you here, so think!"

"Cesp, stop." I had a hand up to my head—didn't know how long it had been aching, only that it was _throbbing_ now.

The Doctor hadn't explained. I knew he hadn't because he never did. He just landed us somewhere, seemingly random, and then it was _did you know_ about this twelve-eyed beaver or that festival for the reanimation of severed limbs, or whatever it was, and maybe there happened to be something wrong, something that needed fighting, someone that needed saving, but I really thought it was just our luck. I suppose it couldn't always be. I tried to think back again but the intensity of Cesp's reptilian gaze on me was too much. I was grateful for the Tardis's intervention as she swung a display screen firmly between us.

Squinting through the pain that had settled behind my eyes, I watched as a rapid stream of peculiar letters flooded the screen. It was Gallifreyan, I realised, whirring past a loading bar with the somewhat more explanatory English caption, "Retrieving last viewed message."

The message was short, and the screen changed fast, but the words were clear.

"DOCTOR HELP US"

Black.

"THE DAZZLING SKY IS FALLING"

Three days later, while Cesp and I were still sitting stunned by the inexplicably apocalyptic message we had discovered on the Tardis, a Krestlehorn breeder from further out the country arrived. His name was Uther Crabheart and he had often done business with Cesp in the past—business and more, I wagered. But although Cesp had referred to him a few times in the past months as a brazenly friendly and wildly enthusiastic person, this wasn't at all the impression I received as I watched him arrive on the Tardis monitor. He moved slowly, with a marked strain, and when he reached Cesp's door, he stood with his cap in his hands and his head bowed. He waited almost three minutes before knocking, even though Cesp must have known he was there to have opened the gates for him.

Uther's news was less of a warning than an apology, Cesp later explained, the two of us sitting inside by her fire. Uther hadn't known his krestlehorns were infected when he brought them into town. They had all seemed fine that morning, but by the evening they were dead, like all the others. He feared he'd been naïve. But they had worse things to fear now.

It was hard for me to understand.

Cesp was in terror when I came to the door. She spoke through it in a desperate whisper, which came out like a hiss. Told me to go back to the Tardis and not to come back. Had I offended her? I didn't think so, and she knew the Tardis wasn't about to take me anywhere, even if I wanted to leave. But eventually it came out. When I returned to the door next, wearing the gaudy yellow hazmat suit the Doctor had bought me on Yallapnos 9, I was let in instantly. Cesp was fatalistic about her own protection—she had already been exposed, she said. And anyway, the Doctor's suit was missing. I had to assume he'd taken it with him, although I couldn't guess why.

"I haven't been here long enough to experience it," Cesp explained now, "But the people in the town all wear the scars—grandmothers and great-grandmothers and great-great grandmothers gone. Three generations wiped out within a week of their infection. It is a plague, a purge. It eats the krestlehorns in a day, and it eats the people for 7. By the time they die, they hardly look like people anymore. So they say…"

Suddenly she paused—not just her speech, but her whole body. She had frozen, and I reached out an absurdly gloved hand to touch her shoulder but found myself stopping short. Finally Cesp resumed with a mild air of lunacy. "A week," she said. "In a _week_ I will be dead." She seemed stunned by her own mouth.

"But maybe you're not infected," I pleaded. "Come in the Tardis and we'll—I don't know. The Tardis will know what to do. She can, like, filter the air or something—inside, anyway. We'll be safe there, just—" Cesp's defeatism was choking, as practical as it must have seemed to her. I refrained from producing the clichés of utter helplessness: _Just hold on_, and _There must be something we can do_.

I mightn't have said it, but she seemed to hear it, and my helplessness fuelled her, gave her a sense of control by control.

"There's nothing to be done," she said firmly, if gently. "You're not from here, Clara. You don't know how it spreads. It's worse than fire—nothing will be untouched. Uther has travelled. He brings news from other cities: That Koring is a ghost town, Pestler has been razed to stop the spread. The Faithwood, only a few hours away by krestlehorn, has been under quarantine for months now. We haven't heard because they've shut down communications in and out—blocked off access for miles. Uther hasn't seen it—well, you can't—but they're saying it's a _Grade 9_ quarantine."

"Grade 9, what does that mean?"

"It means— Well, it means, _everything_, Clara. All possible measures." It seemed to make Cesp uncomfortable to say. I think it embarrassed her, the horribleness of it, even as an immigrant. "They block off both incoming and outgoing communications, confiscate all non medical technologies, seal the city in—that is, they close the shades and seal all the gates in the city walls. Nobody gets in or out, nobody and nothing—not even air from the outside. They're completely self-sustaining. They—" She stopped and gave a sudden, inappropriate bark of laughter. "Well, it doesn't matter. They're all dead in there for all we know. And if they're not, they're only prolonging the inevitable."

Here I felt I had to intervene, and opened my mouth boldly, but again she silenced me.

"I don't feel it yet but it won't be long," she said, still with her utterly piercing gentleness. "This has happened here before. It will cleanse the planet, right down to the seeds."

This was too much. Travelling with the Doctor made you sensitive to utter hopelessness. It was never right to get angry about it—who would that help—but it ground against you just the same. And for me, well, the Doctor _was_ hope. That was what he did, every day, every night, wherever he went. He travelled in his goddamn bloody Hopemobile and _made things right_. Cesp's lack of hope was only reinforcing the Doctor's absence to me, and I couldn't take it. Especially since I suddenly knew with total certainty where the Doctor was.

He'd gone where hope was weakest, where fear reigned strongest, where terror of the outside was so utterly rampant that the most traumatically horrible things could go on inside and nobody would say a word against them.

He'd gone to the Faithwood. And leaving me, as always, had been his misguided way of protecting me.

When I turned to Cesp to explain it all she had fallen asleep. I preferred to think it was exhaustion , emotional and physical, that had worn her out, but of course I worried her fears weren't entirely hysterical. A plague that killed in seven days every time—was it possible? A plague that would savage the planet until nothing remained but the seeds.

Although I managed to pull Cesp back to the Tardis with me, I knew I wouldn't be able to do the same for Uther, sleeping upstairs. Cesp and I would have to fetch him in tomorrow before we decided what to do.

Having settled Cesp, I made it back to my room on pure adrenaline, and I hesitated to take off the suit even there. A soothing whispering through the Tardis assured me gently that she understood and that it was safe inside, but for a long time I couldn't make my hands move on the clasps. At some point though, I must have slept because when I opened my eyes again it was morning and all the Krestlehorns outside were dead.


End file.
